Post staff's Amarillo funds trip

Around 600 staff joined in with the video recreation in Swansea

Peter Kay's comic video tribute to the 70s hit Amarillo has been recreated by post office staff in Swansea to help a colleague's chronically ill daughter.

Hundreds of workers joined in the making of the DVD to raise funds for two-year-old Rhiannon Pridmore.

She is quadriplegic and has cerebral palsy and her parents hope to take her for intensive physiotherapy in Florida.

Already donations are flooding in as family and friends of the post office workers snap up copies of the video.

Swansea manger Brian Clarke and cleaner Joanne Jones came up with the idea of doing the Peter Kay-style spoof of the Tony Christie hit, which was re-released and was No 1 single for two months.

Mr Clarke brought his video camera into work and edited the footage at home of hundreds of staff miming along to the song that spent seven weeks on top of the UK charts earlier this year.

"The response has been fantastic, he said.

"Copies are selling out and so many people have made donations. Someone has even offered them use of their holiday home in Florida when they go out."

Rhiannon's father Brian, a 46-year-old postman, and his wife Jane hope the treatment in America could help develop their daughter's muscle control.

She communicates by nodding at images held in front of her by her parents.

'Overwhelming'

The couple, of Waunarlwydd, said they were overwhelmed by the fundraising efforts of his colleagues.

"I've seen it seven or eight times now and can't stop laughing every time," said Mr Pridmore.

"And the reaction from people who have heard about it has been overwhelming as well."

The couple said they were not planning to take Rhiannon to the centre in the Florida Keys until October 2006 when they hope she would be old enough to get maximum benefit from the trip.

Mrs Pridmore said: "We are not expecting miracles from the intensive therapy but if she gets anything out of it will be brilliant."